arose it did not utterly overwhelm us’—these are questions upon which difference of opinion will always exist. The first open indication of the approaching catastrophe was given in February 1857 by the 19th Bengal native infantry at Berhampore refusing to receive the new cartridges. Previous to and subsequent to this affair, reports were received of a mysterious circulation of ‘chupatties,’ small cakes of unleavened meal, which were passed from village to village in the north-western provinces, and of lotus flowers sent from regiment to regiment. There were also numerous acts of incendiarism in the military cantonments. On 29 March the first act of violence took place, when a sepoy of the 34th regiment at Barrackpur, in a state of intoxication, attacked and wounded the adjutant of the regiment, many hundred men of the regiment looking on quietly, while a native officer refused to take the assailant into custody, and forbade his men to render any assistance to the English officer, who narrowly escaped with his life. The extent of the native disaffection was not seen, however, until 10 May, when the mutiny at Meerut, accompanied by the murder of several English officers and other English men and women, followed the next day by the rising of the native troops and massacre of Europeans at Delhi, and in the course of a few weeks by the rising of nearly the whole of the Bengal army, by the rebellion in Oudh, by the massacre at Cawnpore, and by the murder of Europeans at many other places in the Bengal presidency and in Central India, showed that British rule in India was confronted by the gravest peril to which it had been exposed since the days of Clive. Canning was much blamed, especially by the English residents of Calcutta, for having failed in the first instance to realise the gravity of the crisis. His refusal at an early period of the mutiny to take advantage of an offer which was made by the English at Calcutta to form a regiment of volunteers, an offer which he afterwards accepted; the delay of the government in ordering a general disarming of the sepoys until the course of events had rendered such a measure impossible; the inclusion of English newspapers in an act restricting the liberty of the press; the application to Englishmen, as well as to natives, of a general disarming act; Canning's efforts to moderate the fierceness of the retribution, which, involving in some cases the sacrifice of innocent men, was being exacted by British officers, both civil and military, for the outrages committed by the mutineers and by others who had participated in those outrages—all these things were severely censured in certain quarters, and for a time brought much unpopularity upon the governor-general among a section of his countrymen in India. ‘Clemency Canning’ was the nickname which was applied to him, and on one occasion it was remarked that his policy was best described by two stamps in use in the Indian post-office, ‘too late’ and ‘insufficient.’ Canning's unpopularity at that time was much fostered by the natural reserve and apparent coldness of his disposition. It is probable that in some cases the tendency to a very deliberate weighing of evidence, when dealing with difficult questions, caused undesirable delays in cases in which promptitude of action was essential. The failure at the early stages of the revolt to realise the magnitude of the danger which had arisen was shared more or less by every Englishman in India, by men of the ripest Indian experience, as well as by men who, like the governor-general and the commander-in-chief, were comparative novices in Indian affairs. Of Canning's undaunted courage and firmness there never was a shadow of a doubt. Lord Elgin and Lord Clyde, like all who were brought into direct official relations with him, were much impressed by the calm courage and firmness evinced by the governor-general at that dark time. Two qualities, always important in a ruler, but exceptionally important in dealing with a perilous crisis, the faculty of reposing confidence in able subordinates, and the prompt and generous recognition of good service, Canning evinced in a remarkable degree. His immediate compliance with Sir Henry Lawrence's application to be invested with full military authority in Oudh enabled the latter to take precautions which, although they failed to stem the tide of rebellion or to prevent the sacrifice of many lives, including that of the gallant and able man who devised them, averted what would have been the far graver disaster of the fall of the Lucknow residency and the massacre of its illustrious garrison. His confidence in John Lawrence was amply justified by the sagacity and courage with which the chief commissioner, discerning the enormous importance of the recapture of Delhi, strained every effort to send to that place all the troops that could possibly be spared from the Punjáab. But while Canning thus trusted the ablest of his lieutenants, he by no means surrendered the exercise of his own judgment when on difficult questions his views differed from theirs. Thus, when John Lawrence recommended the abandonment of the trans-Indus territory, in opposition to the advice of Sydney Cotton and Herbert Edwardes, the governor-general decided against the proposal, and at a later
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/420
